Provided by: ganeti-2.16_2.16.0~rc2-1build1_all 
Name
ganeti-os-interface - Specifications for guest OS types
DESCRIPTION
The method of supporting guest operating systems in Ganeti is to have, for each guest OS type, a directo‐
ry containing a number of required files. This directory must be present across all nodes (Ganeti
doesn't replicate it) in order for the OS to be usable by Ganeti.
REFERENCE
There are eight required files: create, import, export, rename, verify (executables), ganeti_api_version,
variants.list and parameters.list (text files).
Common environment
All commands will get their input via environment variables. A common set of variables will be exported
for all commands, and some of them might have extra ones. Note that all counts are zero-based.
Since Ganeti version 2.5, the environment will be cleaned up before being passed to scripts, therefore
they will not inherit the environment in with which the ganeti node daemon was started. If you depend on
any environment variables (non-Ganeti), then you will need to define or source them appropriately.
OS_API_VERSION
The OS API version that the rest of the environment conforms to.
INSTANCE_NAME
The instance name the script should operate on.
INSTANCE_OS, OS_NAME
Both names point to the name of the instance's OS as Ganeti knows it. This can simplify the OS
scripts by providing the same scripts under multiple names, and then the scripts can use this name
to alter their behaviour.
With OS API 15 changing the script behavior based on this variable is deprecated: OS_VARIANT
should be used instead (see below).
OS_VARIANT
The variant of the OS which should be installed. Each OS must support all variants listed under
its variants.list file, and may support more. Any more supported variants should be properly doc‐
umented in the per-OS documentation.
HYPERVISOR
The hypervisor of this instance.
DISK_COUNT
The number of disks the instance has. The actual disk definitions are in a set of additional
variables. The instance's disk will be numbered from 0 to this value minus one.
DISK ()%N_PATH
The path to the storage for disk N of the instance. This might be either a block device or a reg‐
ular file, in which case the OS scripts should use losetup (if they need to mount it). E.g. the
first disk of the instance might be exported as DISK_0_PATH=/dev/drbd0. If the disk is only ac‐
cessible via a userspace URI, this not be set.
DISK ()%N_URI
The userspace URI to the storage for disk N of the instance, if configured.
DISK ()%N_ACCESS
This is how the hypervisor will export the instance disks: either read-write (rw) or read-only
(ro).
DISK ()%N_UUID
The uuid associated with the N-th disk of the instance.
DISK ()%N_NAME
(Optional) The name, if any, associated with the N-th disk of the instance.
DISK ()%N_FRONTEND_TYPE
(Optional) If applicable to the current hypervisor type: the type of the device exported by the
hypervisor. For example, the Xen HVM hypervisor can export disks as either paravirtual or ioemu.
DISK ()%N_BACKEND_TYPE
How files are visible on the node side. This can be either block (when using block devices) or
file:type, where type is either loop, blktap or blktap2, depending on how the hypervisor will be
configured. Note that not all backend types apply to all hypervisors.
NIC_COUNT
Similar to the DISK_COUNT, this represents the number of NICs of the instance.
NIC ()%N_MAC
The MAC address associated with this interface.
NIC ()%N_UUID
The uuid associated with the N-th NIC of the instance.
NIC ()%N_NAME
(Optional) The name, if any, associated with the N-th NIC of the instance.
NIC ()%N_IP
The IP address, if any, associated with the N-th NIC of the instance.
NIC ()%N_MODE
The NIC mode, routed, bridged or openvswitch
NIC ()%N_BRIDGE
The bridge to which this NIC will be attached. This variable is defined only when the NIC is in
bridged mode.
NIC ()%N_LINK
In bridged or openvswitch mode, this is the interface to which the NIC will be attached (same as
NIC_%N_BRIDGE for bridged). In routed mode it is the routing table which will be used by the hy‐
pervisor to insert the appropriate routes.
NIC ()%N_FRONTEND_TYPE
(Optional) If applicable, the type of the exported NIC to the instance, this can be one of:
rtl8139, ne2k_pci, ne2k_isa, paravirtual.
NIC ()%d_NETWORK_NAME
(Optional) If a NIC network is specified, the network's name.
NIC ()%d_NETWORK_UUID
(Optional) If a NIC network is specified, the network's uuid.
NIC ()%d_NETWORK_FAMILY
(Optional) If a NIC network is specified, the network's family.
NIC ()%d_NETWORK_SUBNET
(Optional) If a NIC network is specified, the network's IPv4 subnet.
NIC ()%d_NETWORK_GATEWAY
(Optional) If a NIC network is specified, the network's IPv4 gateway.
NIC ()%d_NETWORK_SUBNET6
(Optional) If a NIC network is specified, the network's IPv6 subnet.
NIC ()%d_NETWORK_GATEWAY6
(Optional) If a NIC network is specified, the network's IPv6 gateway.
NIC ()%d_NETWORK_MAC_PREFIX
(Optional) If a NIC network is specified, the network's mac prefix.
NIC ()%d_NETWORK_TAGS
(Optional) If a NIC network is specified, the network's tags, space separated.
OSP ()name
Each OS parameter (see below) will be exported in its own variable, prefixed with OSP_, and up‐
per-cased. For example, a dhcp parameter will be exported as OSP_DHCP.
DEBUG_LEVEL
If non-zero, this should cause the OS script to generate verbose logs of its execution, for trou‐
bleshooting purposes. Currently only 0 and 1 are valid values.
EXECUTABLE SCRIPTS
create
The create command is used for creating a new instance from scratch. It has no additional environment
variables bside the common ones.
The INSTANCE_NAME variable denotes the name of the instance, which is guaranteed to resolve to an IP ad‐
dress. The create script should configure the instance according to this name. It can configure the IP
statically or not, depending on the deployment environment.
The INSTANCE_REINSTALL variable is set to 1 when this create request is reinstalling an existing in‐
stance, rather than creating a new one. This can be used, for example, to preserve some data in the old
instance in an OS-specific way.
export
This command is used in order to make a backup of a given disk of the instance. The command should write
to stdout a dump of the given block device. The output of this program will be passed during restore to
the import command.
The specific disk to backup is denoted by four additional environment variables:
EXPORT_INDEX
The index in the instance disks structure (and could be used for example to skip the second disk
if not needed for backup).
EXPORT_DISK_PATH
Alias for DISK_N_PATH. It is duplicated here for easier usage by shell scripts (rather than parse
the DISK_... variables).
EXPORT_DISK_URI
Alias for DISK_N_URI, analagous to EXPORT_DISK_PATH.
EXPORT_DEVICE
Historical alias for EXPORT_DISK_PATH.
To provide the user with an estimate on how long the export will take, a predicted size can be written to
the file descriptor passed in the variable EXP_SIZE_FD. The value is in bytes and must be terminated by
a newline character (\n). Older versions of Ganeti don't support this feature, hence the variable should
be checked before use. Example:
if test -n "$EXP_SIZE_FD"; then
blockdev --getsize64 $blockdev >&$EXP_SIZE_FD
fi
import
The import command is used for restoring an instance from a backup as done by export. The arguments are
the similar to those passed to export, whose output will be provided on stdin.
The difference in variables is that the current disk is denoted by IMPORT_DISK_PATH, IMPORT_DISK_URI, IM‐
PORT_DEVICE and IMPORT_INDEX (instead of EXPORT_...).
rename
This command is used in order to perform a rename at the instance OS level, after the instance has been
renamed in Ganeti. The command should do whatever steps are required to ensure that the instance is up‐
dated to use the new name, if the operating system supports it.
Note that it is acceptable for the rename script to do nothing at all, however be warned that in this
case, there will be a desynchronization between what gnt-instance list shows you and the actual hostname
of the instance.
The script will be passed one additional environment variable called OLD_INSTANCE_NAME which holds the
old instance name. The INSTANCE_NAME variable holds the new instance name.
A very simple rename script should at least change the hostname and IP address of the instance, leaving
the administrator to update the other services.
verify
The verify script is used to verify consistency of the OS parameters (see below). The command should
take one or more arguments denoting what checks should be performed, and return a proper exit code de‐
pending on whether the validation failed or succeeded.
Currently (API version 20), only one parameter is supported: parameters. This should validate the OSP_
variables from the environment, and output diagnostic messages in case the validation fails.
For the dhcp parameter given as example above, a verification script could be:
#!/bin/sh
case $OSP_DHCP in
""|yes|no)
;;
*)
echo "Invalid value '$OSP_DHCP' for the dhcp parameter" 1>&2
exit 1;
;;
esac
exit 0
TEXT FILES
ganeti_api_version
The ganeti_api_version file is a plain text file containing the version(s) of the guest OS API that this
OS definition complies with, one per line. The version documented by this man page is 20, so this file
must contain the number 20 followed by a newline if only this version is supported. A script compatible
with more than one Ganeti version should contain the most recent version first (i.e. 20), followed by
the old version(s) (in this case 15 and/or 10).
variants.list
variants.list is a plain text file containing all the declared supported variants for this OS, one per
line. If this file is missing or empty, then the OS won't be considered to support variants.
Empty lines and lines starting with a hash (#) are ignored.
parameters.list
This file declares the parameters supported by the OS, one parameter per line, with name and description
(space and/or tab separated). For example:
dhcp Whether to enable (yes) or disable (no) dhcp
root_size The size of the root partition, in GiB
The parameters can then be used in instance add or modification, as follows:
# gnt-instance add -O dhcp=no,root_size=8 ...
NOTES
Backwards compatibility
Ganeti 2.3 and up is compatible with API versions 10, 15 and 20. The OS parameters and related scripts
(verify) are only supported in version 20. The variants functionality (variants.list, and OS_VARIANT
env. var) are supported/present only in version 15 and up.
Common behaviour
All the scripts should display an usage message when called with a wrong number of arguments or when the
first argument is -h or --help.
Upgrading from old versions
Version 15 to 20
The parameters.list file and verify script have been added. For no parameters, an empty parameters file
and an empty verify script which returns success can be used.
Version 10 to 15
The variants.list file has been added, so OSes should support at least one variant, declaring it in that
file and must be prepared to parse the OS_VARIANT environment variable. OSes are free to support more
variants than just the declared ones. Note that this file is optional; without it, the variants func‐
tionality is disabled.
Version 5 to 10
The method for passing data has changed from command line options to environment variables, so scripts
should be modified to use these. For an example of how this can be done in a way compatible with both
versions, feel free to look at the debootstrap instance's common.sh auxiliary script.
Also, instances can have now a variable number of disks, not only two, and a variable number of NICs (in‐
stead of fixed one), so the scripts should deal with this. The biggest change is in the import/export,
which are called once per disk, instead of once per instance.
Version 4 to 5
The rename script has been added. If you don't want to do any changes on the instances after a rename,
you can migrate the OS definition to version 5 by creating the rename script simply as:
#!/bin/sh
exit 0
Note that the script must be executable.
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to project website (http://code.google.com/p/ganeti/) or contact the developers using the
Ganeti mailing list (ganeti@googlegroups.com).
SEE ALSO
Ganeti overview and specifications: ganeti(7) (general overview), ganeti-os-interface(7) (guest OS defin‐
itions), ganeti-extstorage-interface(7) (external storage providers).
Ganeti commands: gnt-cluster(8) (cluster-wide commands), gnt-job(8) (job-related commands), gnt-node(8)
(node-related commands), gnt-instance(8) (instance commands), gnt-os(8) (guest OS commands), gnt-stor‐
age(8) (storage commands), gnt-group(8) (node group commands), gnt-backup(8) (instance import/export com‐
mands), gnt-debug(8) (debug commands).
Ganeti daemons: ganeti-watcher(8) (automatic instance restarter), ganeti-cleaner(8) (job queue cleaner),
ganeti-noded(8) (node daemon), ganeti-rapi(8) (remote API daemon).
Ganeti htools: htools(1) (generic binary), hbal(1) (cluster balancer), hspace(1) (capacity calculation),
hail(1) (IAllocator plugin), hscan(1) (data gatherer from remote clusters), hinfo(1) (cluster information
printer), mon-collector(7) (data collectors interface).
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2006-2015 Google Inc. All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided
that the following conditions are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and
the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and
the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR
ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMIT‐
ED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUP‐
TION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (IN‐
CLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF
THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Ganeti ganeti-os-interface(7)